High-Rise Relics:
Ghost Structures
Haunt Bangkok

BANGKOK -- One recent steamy afternoon, a shirtless man named Nop tossed out chunks of putrid meat for the dozen stray dogs that share his home, an open-air encampment inside the unfinished 47-story Sathorn Unique tower.

Ten years ago, Sathorn Unique was destined to be one of the city's glitziest addresses. Today, its Corinthian columns and four-story arches are nearly lost amid a tangle of trees and vines. Although workers completed the building's basic structure all the way to the top, its concrete shell starts to peter out about 20 stories up, leaving exposed metal and a half-finished dome on the roof. Steel bars jut out in all directions and mounds of refuse litter the grounds. Inside, two out-of-service escalators climb to nowhere and the smell of urine is overpowering.

But at least, Nop says, "the building won't collapse."

WSJ's Patrick Barta travels by rickshaw, boat and motorcycle to explore Bangkok's most impressive modern day ruins. (July 27)

The building is one of a dozen or more major "ghost" structures that haunt Bangkok's skyline. Many of them were started in the mid-1990s when Thailand's economy was booming. Developers envisioned a city of gleaming office and residential skyscrapers symbolic of the nation's rapid development; not that long before, the tallest buildings in the city were Buddhist temples. Then Thailand sank into a swamp of reckless investments and unpaid debts that became known as the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The country's economy contracted 10% in 1998, and many of the building projects came to a crashing halt. In the decade since, Thailand has more or less recovered. The economy is growing again, traffic gridlock has returned to the streets of the capital, and shiny new malls are sprouting up everywhere. But many of those who failed in the crisis either can't be bothered or can't afford to restart their building projects, leaving Bangkok with more modern ruins than probably any other big city in the world, according to architectural experts.

They include four steel skeletons of 35 stories or more rotting along a busy roadway by Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. Another 35-story high-rise in the middle of the central business district is covered in graffiti of octopuses and space aliens. An ugly pile of rust-covered steel beams and concrete pillars sits next to one of Bangkok's most fashionable hotels.

Then there's the unfinished elevated commuter train, whose hundreds of abandoned rail supports march through the city like giant dominoes. The so-called "Hopewell" rail project died in 1997, too.

Courts and government officials haven't been eager to force bankrupt owners to unload their properties or resolve continuing legal disputes, which could have paved the way for faster redevelopment. Many influential families were able to hang onto their dud assets after the crash even after it became clear they would never restart them. In Thailand's labyrinthine bureaucracy, it can be hard to trace the last owners of the projects, and government officials routinely refuse to disclose information about them.

Bangkok also has plenty of land, so it is easier for developers to sidestep the ruins of yesteryear instead of tearing them down. Thailand's mellow brand of Buddhism may even play a role, some say, because it leaves people somewhat complacent about the unfinished buildings despite the occasional chunks of metal and steel that rain down during storms.

"Maybe for us they're great eyesores, because Americans can't deal with things that are unresolved," says Paul Katz, a principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects in New York, who has spent time in Bangkok. "But Asian cultures understand the world isn't perfect...everything isn't always finished." Mr. Katz describes the buildings as "poetic," adding they're "not completely boring to look at, especially when things start growing out of them."

Most of the 300 or more high rises left unfinished when the 1997 crisis struck have been completed. Among them: the 68-story neoclassical State Tower, which sat empty and forlorn for years but now sports one of Asia's swankiest open-air restaurants on top.

But as many as one-fifth of the projects that were interrupted in central Bangkok are still not completed, and many may never be. Some don't really count as full-fledged urban ruins, since they were in the very early stages of development when work ceased. For the big ones, it's becoming increasingly difficult to restart work.

The unfinished towers of SV Garden loom over what was to become the new financial center of Bangkok.

Engineers say many incomplete towers can't survive much longer than 10 years in Bangkok's blistering tropical heat and rain before suffering significant structural damage. The buildings won't necessarily fall down, but the cost of repairing or reinforcing their rusted-out beams becomes prohibitively high.

For many people here, the buildings have become just another part of the urban landscape. Thai students study them for school projects. Artists incorporate them into their work. In one 2005 gallery show, called "Ghosttransmissions," a group of local and foreign artists -- including a Thai who calls himself "Duck Unit" -- featured video and sound recordings from the vacant buildings. Architecture fans track the buildings' progress, or lack of it, on a number of Web sites.

Some people are living in the buildings or in their shadows. Damri Tungsirimitra, a 57-year-old contract laborer, lives in a house about 20 feet from the perimeter of the Sathorn Unique tower. On a recent day, Mr. Damri was drying fish stomach in a basket while his family hung laundry on the chain-link fence around the building.

Mr. Damri pointed to a jagged piece of wood with rusted nails hanging from the tower overhead. Sooner or later, a wind storm will set that relic free, he says. A piece of metal from the building already crashed through the roof of a nearby parking lot and smashed into a car below.

At SV Garden, a city-within-a-city along Bangkok's Chao Phraya River, Sasamon Julasophonsri, a 46-year-old food vendor, lives just under the hulking ruins behind a white picket fence. On the ground floor of the vast unfinished development, flakes of rusted steel break off from support beams. Impenetrable messes of green weeds encroach from all sides. Stray dogs wander around. At night, thieves steal up by boat and carve out chunks of the exposed metal that protrude from concrete walls.

At more than 40 stories high, Sathorn Unique towers over its surroundings in a largely residential neighborhood in central Bangkok.

"I fear if they cut any more, it will collapse and fall on my house," Ms. Sasamon says.

Launched by a Thai conglomerate called SV Group and a Hong Kong architect named Eric Lai, SV Garden was supposed to help transform the area into Bangkok's new financial center. The developers were so confident that they decided to build multiple towers -- some more than 35 stories high -- all at the same time.

They blanketed the city in advertising and pre-sold a large percentage of the condominium units. But in early 1997, one of the project's 11 lenders failed, triggering a freeze on funding, Mr. Lai recalls in an interview. The developers eventually stopped construction, leaving the shells of four major towers partly clad in concrete. Condo buyers were furious. Mr. Lai and others had to scramble to sort out the mess.

Eventually, the case moved into the hands of a Thai bankruptcy court, which appointed an independent administrator to manage a reorganization. At about the same time, new investors considered redeveloping the project, people familiar with the matter say, but some of the creditors held out for a better deal and now some condominium owners refuse to consider anything less than a full return on their investment. No serious new investor has emerged.

SV Group, which is linked to a powerful Thai family, continues to run a large steel company. It didn't respond to requests for comment.

As he picked at a tuna sandwich in a Bangkok hotel caf&eacute;, Mr. Lai said he lost "a lot" of money in the project but declined to be specific. He says he's no longer involved in SV Garden but still hopes it will flourish -- someday. "Over time it gets more difficult," he admits. "But I hope it happens." In the meantime, he is developing projects in Malaysia and Pattaya, a busy beach resort southeast of Bangkok.